KIEV, July 22. /ITAR-TASS/. The Verkhovna Rada has passed a law on dissolution of the Communist faction. Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said he would send the law to the president immediately.

In May, Turchynov asked the Justice Ministry to look into the Communist Party’s role in separatist activities and to initiate legal action to ban it completely. The move followed Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko’s public appeal to the Kiev authorities to stop the army operation in the east of the country and make up their mind about federalization.

Symonenko said that the people living in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions had come in large numbers to polling stations in the May 11 referendum to vote against “the Kiev authorities and the ruling regime”.

The court will consider the issue on July 24. The materials filed by the Justice Ministry and containing more than 120 pages concern what it called the occupation of Crimea and the sponsoring of “separatists”.

Other bills currently sitting in the parliament call for canceling the Communist Party’s registration and banning the communist ideology as such.